California and Mob Rule

[Krill]

So, there's been 1 in this decade so far?

That's roughly equal to the rate for black people even now. That's honestly a negligible rate.

I'm not sure that I've ever seen Ben Kenobi make a personal attack against another poster. He believes some pretty terrible things, but he doesn't direct attacks against other posters. I've also never seen him say that lynchings are acceptable.

I read the above as saying "It's negligable...it's OK". He basically implied it; and I'm fine with him holding opinions like that, because I hold lower ones of people like him.

I don't however much appreciate the fact that we can't call him out as the slimy, evil, unchristian twofaced, misquoting, misrepresenting, lying weasel that he is, given the proof that we have.

Also, I am thankful for the ignore list anyway to make it work on quoted posts?

[Ben Kenobi]

You can take a look at the statistics. It averages about 3 murders a year. Or put it another way, that would mean about 78 murders for a 26 year period like that.

http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/lynchings/THE%20LYNCHING%20CENTURY%203.htm

These put some names to them. Strange they should be so far out.

[Krill]

I really like the ignore function.

[Drake Tungsten]

Absolutely unacceptable. Which is why I'm glad that those who assaulted and killed the three mentioned were taken to trial and arrested.

I believe violence against anyone is wrong. I just don't believe that we should have special classes, where some crimes are deemed more heinious then others. If the problem is that assault is not prosecuted sufficiently, then that's the problem that needs to be fixed. I say that as a member of a special class, I do not want to be treated differently just because I have a disability.

Krill needs to see this.

[Drake Tungsten]

http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/lynchin...ENTURY%203.htm

These put some names to them. Strange they should be so far out.

And this.

[Ben Kenobi]

I can already predict one of his counterarguments, actually, which is that sometimes violence against gays is unrelated to their sexuality but mistakenly gets classified as a hate crime anyway.

That's part of it. My first question is what exactly constitutes a hate crime? It is very, very wrong to assume that any crime in which a gay person is involved is done because they were gay. If that's your standard, then it's not a hate crime.

What actions are covered? That to me is the big deal. What counts and what does not? Are hate crimes self-reported? How do we know that they in fact happened the way that the plaintiff says they happened?

But even if the mistaken incident rate is 1%, or 10%, or 20%, that's still well over a thousand violent acts against against gays every single year.

We have hate crimes legislation, and it's a big mistake to assume even that a significant proportion of 'hate crimes' are at all violent. Logically, if hate crimes encompass non-violent acts, they will form the bulk of 'hate crimes' simply because they are that much more common then violent acts.

A third point is that hate crimes against gays do happen with much less frequency than hate crimes motivated by race - 16.6% versus 50.8%. But for that I lean back on the fact that there are fewer gays than blacks, gays are harder to spot than blacks, and again, the true number is likely underrepresented due to lack of hate crime legislation and an unwillingness of victims to come forward.

Black people are about 15 percent of the US population, and they have roughly 35 percent of the reported cases of discrimination. If you assume that gay people are 10 percent of the population, then black people have a much higher rate of discrimination. If you argue visible vs invisible minority, then that is a point in my favour as I am arguing the two don't have comparable situations.

I'd love to see the percentage of white people who have experienced a hate crime.

[Krill]

If I'm guessing correctly, Drake probably just posted at least one message intended to prove me wrong.

God this ignore function is ****ing awesome.

[Drake Tungsten]

Made another ignore list.

[Lorizael]

That's absolutely irrelevant. If 50.8 percent of black people have experienced a hate crime and only 16.6 percent of homosexuals have experienced a hate crime, then the fact that there are fewer gays has nothing to do with that number at all.

No, I was unclear here. 50.8% of hate crimes in 2007 were against black people, whereas only 16.6% were against gays.

[Ben Kenobi]

32.4 percent were destruction/damage/vandalism.
28.5 percent were intimidation.
18.7 percent were simple assault.
12.4 percent were aggravated assault.
8.1 percent were comprised of additional crimes against persons, property, and society.

Ok, there we go. 30 percent were assault or aggravated assault. Unfortunately the database doesn't allow us to do the analysis where we can show whether there were significant differences across individual groups, (ie, whether black people are more likely to suffer from assault or aggravated assault).

Edit: My bad Lori, I've checked the source, and it was out of the total.

[Arrian]

Hate crime legislation makes no sense to me. Matthew Sheppard's killers were arrested, prosecuted and convicted, as was proper. HCL seems, to me, unlikely to provide much benifit whilst skirting dangerously close to thought crime law.

-Arrian

[Edan]

I believe violence against anyone is wrong. I just don't believe that we should have special classes, where some crimes are deemed more heinious then others.

So you don't think that we should differentiate 1st degree Murder from 2nd degree from manslaughter? One punishment fits all of them?

[KrazyHorse]

It's almost as though you don't understand the difference between motive and intent.

[DinoDoc]

Clearly I meant a revisit of the issue addressed by Prop8.

They've already dealt with that issue, Arrian. Was there something substantively wrong with the process they used? Or do you see a substantial shift in support on the issue?

[KrazyHorse]

God, I hate being on the same side as BK. Damn you for quoting him, Drake.